O livro, da autoria do professor Noël Golvers, do Instituto Ferdinand Verbiest (Universidade Católica de Lovaina, na Bélgica), é o resultado de um vasto trabalho de duas décadas de investigação e o mais recente e completo trabalho de levantamento da variada correspondência do P. Ferdinand Verbiest.
Noël GolversFerdinand Verbiest Instituut KU Leuven
(Leuven Chinese Studies XXXV)
Leuven, 2017, 962 p., EUR 82,00
ISBN 9789082090987
ISBN 9789082090987
Together with Verbiest’s printed works, this
correspondence is the most direct witness of his rich life and activities
(1623-1688). It covers the 43 years between his first application for the
Indies (1645) and his farewell to the Kangxi Emperor (28.01.1688). Side by side
with the copies of his astronomical drawings and eclipse maps, inventoried in
F. Verbiest and the Chinese Heaven (2003), these letters reveal a wide-ranging
network of contacts, within China and with Europe. The topics are as many and
various as the 55 correspondents are different, spanning the whole spectrum
from the Jesuits in Moscow to Pedro II in Lisbon, from the Franciscans in
Shandong to Pope Innocentius XI and the Cardinals of CPF in Rome. The
topics are related to his successive positions in the Jesuit hierarchy in
China, his work as an engineer and ‘astronomer’ for the Court and his
international diplomatic interventions, with the Jesuit mission in China as the
central argument. Verbiest appears in his letters as a very engaged personality,
with strong (but carefully outed) convictions and a wide outlook, which
comprises the Peking and European Courts, together with Manila, Goa and Siam in
one vision. This edition of 134 letters from and to Verbiest replaces that of
Henri Bosmans (ed. by H. Josson and L. Willaert), publ. in Brussels in 1938. It
is a critical revision of the formerly known 80 items, with a restitution of
the original Chinese transcriptions (due to A. Dudink), all extended with 54
new items, mostly from the Ajuda archives (Lisbon), the latter putting
especially the Chinese scene in the focus. Two major documents are added (dated
1661 and 1681), which reflect his talents as a polemic writer; also in various
other letters he unfolds scriptorial talents, combined to a sharp sense of
observation. All this makes this pluri-linguistic corpus (mainly in Latin and
Portuguese) to a first-hand testimony of the Jesuit mission in China during the
restoration from its crisis (1665-1669) to its apogee, of which many dramatic
moments and aspects are revealed by the author, who was the main agent in this
process.
Para mais informações e compra da obra, contacte:
pieter.ackerman@fvi.kuleuven.be ou Cheryl.liao@fvi.kuleuven.be
